collected
I actually found out about NextEngine through a Google ad on my own site. So I guess Google advertising does work. They make very affordable ($2495) desktop 3D laser scanners. Although it’s out of my budget at the moment, the fact that you can get a USB desktop laser scanner for around $2500 is pretty cool. I’m curious to hear if any of my readers have used one, and what their thoughts are.
Tags: NextEngine, 3D Scanner
I’ve been playing with Joost a bit over the past week, and I stand by my initial impressions. I like their technology, and the interface is not bad once you get used to it. The problem is they lack compelling content at the moment. It seems to me that Joost either needs to get more deals with television content providers, or else open up the platform for Internet video (Rocketboom, etc.).
I suggest they talk to Mark Cuban, as I think he still owns the Lifestyles of the Rich and famous catalog and since he can’t repurpose that for HDnet, since it was shot on video and can’t really be upconverted, it may make sense for him to syndicate it through Joost.
Tags: Joost, Mark Cuban
I watched The Departed
The Departed is a classic undercover cop infiltrates organized crime story, with several twists. Instead of taking the usual plot approach of structuring the story around the undercover officer’s attempts at creating a case against the organized crime bosses, The Departed instead focuses on the cat and mouse game between the undercover officer who has infiltrated the crime syndicate and the crime syndicate’s mole inside the police department. They are constantly struggling to learn the other’s identity and provide useful information to their respective organizations without betraying their true identities.
The acting and cast was stellar. Martin Sheen, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio - what’s not to like?
If you enjoy movies along the lines of Donnie Brasco
Tags: The Departed, Movie, Donnie Brasco, LA Confidential
Wired has a piece covering some apparently prototype software that allows a single 2D image of a face to be extrapolated into an accurate 3D model. There’s a video showing the software in action and I highly suggest taking a look.
I agree with those who commented that this technology cries out for application in simple end-user tools. And no, I don’t consider something like 3D Studio Max or Maya “end-user tools”.
I’d love to use technology like this to more accurately model my avatar in Second Life, for example. And the world of MMORPGs has exploded in the past few years. Now Sony has announced their virtual world “Home” will be launching in the fall on PS3.
We need more 3D-Tools-for-Graphics-Dummies.
Tags: Graphics, Second Life, MMORPG
This article on MarketWatch quotes a yet to be released national survey which shows that the number of people who responded that they had ever listened to a podcast was only up slightly in the last year. This is in spite of the fact that there is a lot of mainstream press about podcasting and videoblogging and the like.
There is speculation in the article that the technical hurdles required to listen to podcasts are still too high. I don’t buy into that. iTunes has supported very easy podcast subscription and listening for quite some time now. And iPods, the kind of the portable mp3 player market, also have good support for playing podcasts.
The real issue is content. As with all media, and especially emerging media, content is king. Just as shows like The Sopranos drive up HBO subscriptions, so too will “must listen” podcasts drive listener adoption. I’m still bullish on podcasting for the long run, and I’d say that survey results of 11-12% of Americans having listened to a podcast are actually high numbers not low numbers given how new the space is.
Tags: Podcast
Much has been written lately about Linden Labs having problems scaling the backend server fleet behind Second Life. At the same time, there has long been call for Linden Labs to open up Second Life to outside server operators. Just as the web would not enjoy the scale and popularity that it does if it were a closed monolithic system, so Second Life cannot really attain its potential if it stays a a Linden Labs walled garden.
I’ve read various interviews with Linden Labs execs talking about their tentative plans to open up third party server access to Second Life. From what I’ve read they are exploring a variety of possibilities from completely open sourcing the server code, to licensing the software commercial for companies to run their own colo servers, to colocating other companies’ servers inside Linden Labs data centers. One option I’ve not heard is how appropriate Amazon’s EC2 elastic compute cloud would be to running third party second life servers (or even for Linden Labs’ own use). EC2 is “elastic” by design, so the compute nodes can be scaled up and scaled down as traffic demands.
I’ve updated my home phone number on my Plaxo card to that of my new Grand Central number. So if you know me and are interested in trying out Grand Central from calling-party perspective, feel free.
If you know me and do not use Plaxo, this is my subtle way of suggesting you get with the program. I know way too many people and it’s a huge hassle for me to hunt them all down.
I got an account on the Joost public beta program today. I hadn’t been real aggressive about trying to get one, but I figured I may as well since they’ll launch it soon.
I accidently forgot to pay attention to the EULA as I clicked through it, so I’m not sure if there is some NDA stuff in there. I doubt it. I don’t have much to report in any case, as I have only played with it a little bit.
The idea for Joost is peer-to-peer legal television-quality programs on demand. Unfortunately right now the service is extremely content-starved and it’s clearly much more of a technical beta than anything else. There are some interesting documentaries and music video content, but if you’re looking for prime time US television, it’s not there. Yet.
As far as the technical features and interface goes, it’s not a traditional Windows UI app and that may cause some learning curve. It looks and feels more like a Flash web application. This isn’t necessarily a negative and it does make the interface feel fresh and trendy, but it may create usability issues for some.
The video codec they are using is fairly resource intensive. My computer isn’t the newest on the block (in fact, it’s becoming a bit out dated as evidenced in my recent experimentation with Second Life), but I have found that I need to close other applications and give Joost everything my system has.
As I play with it more, I plan to send them some feedback. So far it seems promising, but this platform will live and die by its content so it’s too early to say what the real prospects are for Joost.
Tags: Joost
I was reading this post on the O’Reilly Radar site and learned of a relatively new startup Grand Central that is changing the rules of telephone numbers. Basically the idea is that you sign up with Grand Central and get a new unified telephone number. Then through their web site you “link” it to your existing phone numbers - cell phones, home, office, whatever. When people call your Grand Central number it will ring all the phones you’ve specified. You can also group various contacts to ring various numbers. It’s fairly flexible and pretty cool. This is not so different from some other offerings that have been around in the past - I think MCI has a package similar to this a few years ago.
But Grand Central offers a few key features that are definitely not available from standard phone companies. One extremely cool feature is the ability to switch phones in the middle of a call. You press the star key on your phone and Grand Central disconnects you (but not the person you’re talking to) and rings your phones again. This would be a killer feature for me, as my cell phone gets horrible reception at home and I’d love to be able to switch to my home VOIP line without having to hang up. I also carry a RAZR and a Blackberry and I don’t typically use the Blackberry for voice, as nobody has the number - but with Grand Central I can switch to the Blackberry if the RAZR’s battery is running low and it’s fairly seamless to the calling party.
Another very cool feature of Grand Central is the ability to screen your calls. When you pick up a Grand Central call it tells you who’s calling, or if they are unknown. You can then send the call to voice mail and even listen in while the person is leaving a message. At that point you are able to pick up the call - just as if it were being left on a physical home answering machine. Using this same technology you can also record phone calls and access them later via the web site. I’m sure podcasters everywhere will appreciate this feature.
The only downside I can see so far is that in their free beta, outbound calling is slightly kludgey. To make an outbound call you can return a call from voicemail, or you can make a call using the web interface. From what I can tell there is no way to initiate an arbitrary new call without using the web interface. This may not be a deal breaker if the web portal works with my Blackberry browser, but it’s something they’ll need to address before launching the paid service.
And of course there’s the concern that trusting an unproven startup with no business model or revenue with your “number for life” may be dicey. Nevertheless, they have some extremely cool technology and I am looking forward to playing with it further.
Tags: Grand Central, VOIP
It looks like I am about to be changing jobs again, and this reminded me that, yes, I am a Plaxo user. Plaxo is a company my friend Sean Parker helped start that is a distributed contact management system. Basically the way it works is that you register with Plaxo and your contacts do as well, and when you update your contact information it automatically propagates to everyone else’s address books.
Pretty handy stuff. If you’re not a user, I suggest you sign up!
Now…if only Grand Central supported Plaxo integration…one can dream…
Tags: Plaxo, Grand Central
